Living in western Canada I have no idea how this can be so. Our Saskatoon summers have been well below average temperature-wise the past two years, and was insanely cool and wet for much of the time this year as well. What am I missing?

Could not happen at a better time. Won’t make a difference to the true believers though. Hansen will still have his hottest on record even he he has to blowtorch each thermometer himself.

Further to the snow I suspect the wind farms will be generating somewhere between zilch and zero as well. Just the power source to keep the hearth warm on frigid and still nights. Oh we are blessed to be surrounded by so many brilliant minds and not a skerrick of common sense between them.

I was just about to post this image to the “Tips & Notes” page when I noticed it had made it to the front page. This is the earliest and heaviest early snow I can remember in my 30-something years. Minus 10 in Edinburgh just now and 2 feet of snow. Heading north tomorrow to a place which is currently minus 18. Thank goodness for the winter tyres….

My youngest was amazed to see somone had built an igloo in my local park , its about nine feet high and nearly as wide , she and the dog crawled through the door and sat inside , she thought it was wonderful ( wanted to sleep in it just like 11 year old’ s do !!) We have had record cold and snowfall , I have not seen the like since the sixties and thought with global warming I never would again . Boy when the UK cuts back on CO2 it does it with a vengence – now we have got no warmth left at all !! Definately think we have overdone it as per usual .

When Britain has hard winters, you usually get a few in a row, then you can be mild for quite a lot of years also. 1979 – 1987 saw quite a few hardish to hard winters. Most of the other winters in the 1970s were pretty mild……….

I don’t see this as a long-term trend, more something which will last a few years……..

Jan 2009: “THE SCEPTICS ARE SKATING ON THIN ICE
I have spent the last two evenings skating. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. All of us knew that this time might be our last. With every year the chances of another skating party recedes.The thought that I might never skate outdoors again feels like a bereavement. I pray for another cold snap.”

Jan 2010: “BRITAIN’S COLD SNAP DOES NOT PROVE CLIMATE CHANGE WRONG
This is called weather, and, believe it or not, it is not always predictable and it changes quite often. It is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends. Is this really so hard to understand?”

George says:”When heatwaves strike, climate scientists and environmentalists tend towards caution, explaining that though such events may be consistent with predictions they cannot be used as proof that climate change is taking place:” Er, yes, of course they do.

The Norwegian Met office reports this is the coldest November on record since the year 1900, where the monthly average for the country is 3.9 C below normal. In the inland, some places where 6-7.5 C below normal.

The Utsira Fyr station located in the middle of the Gulf current south-west of Norway recorded a minimum of -6.2 C, the lowest measured temperature since recordings started in 1867.

“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent. This year, for the first time ever, Hamleys, Britain’s biggest toyshop, had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store. “It was a bit of a first,” a spokesperson said.”

“This is called weather, and, believe it or not, it is not always predictable and it changes quite often. It is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends. Is this really so hard to understand?”
”

Climate at its root must be composed of some amount of weather.
You can shout “trend ” all you like but at some point the weather should match
the climate.
The more it doesn’t, the more we question the reports of the state of the climate.

if this winter carries on at this rate, it’ll be worse than the great winter of ’63.
I predict it will carry on like this. Since the London Thames froze over in ’63, I’m therefore commited to predicting the London Thames will freeze over this winter aswell.

Hope the AGW gang don’t dump salt and anti freeze in the thames just to refute me.

I reside in the “clear” bit, north of Liverpool, next to the Irish Sea. Unlike most of the UK, we’ve only had a couple of sprinklings of snow, but the temperatures have remained well below the seasonal norm since early November. Our winters have become noticeably colder over the past 5 years. Last month was the coldest in the UK since 1913, and the lowest November temperature ever was recorded. Seeing how badly we Brits cope with cold(ish!) weather, I cannot imagine what will happen if the world continues to cool for another 20 years or more. Hopefully, we will be able to sell off the 10,000+ ineffective/unusable windmills that we will have purchased from Germany and the USA. Any takers?

Not to mention one of the snowiest (is that a word?) Novembers on record. Nearly as much snow in one month as an entire winter and, sadly, more to come. I don’t have much more room in my small yard for any more.

But it can’t be that snowy just ask Met and WMO. The latter apparently is ready to swish their statistical wand and make 2010 the warmest year “ever” since all the way back to the 1850’s.

I’m thinking these hippies need less badly home-coded super computers and an least amount of weather stations around the globe to do any kinds of global statistics (and why isn’t that a standard already?) But of course hippie Hansen wouldn’t be to happy to have to use actual weather stations though, least like 60 000 of ’em. And just imagine what it would do to Mann-schtick if he had to use proxy data from 60 000 different locations spread out evenly around the globe?

I do hope all those wind turbines are whirring away to make sure we’ve got lots of nice ‘renewable’ electricity to keep us warm tonight – its going to be about minus twelve, I believe…
Not enough wind..? Oh, dear. Well that buggers the theory then – better rely on good old coal/gas/nuclear, as they are having to do in Denmark, Germany and Holland, despite all the wind turbines they’ve got…

To doug obach.
It is easy to explain why it was the warmest year ever in canada. If you look at the charts and graphs, you will see high temperature anomolies everywhere where people don’t live and no actual thermometers exist

Doug Obach said (December 2, 2010 at 1:30 pm):
Can someone please let me know how the CBC can report that its the warmist year in the history of Canada???

I have begun constructing graphs based on published temperature data from RAF Shawbury, simply because it’s close to home. The Met Office series dates back only to 1957. Can anybody help me out here: I want to find a longer series, ideally close to home so I can validate by talking to local farmers or by accessing newspaper archives.

I want the authentic source data. The Met Office is so contaminated by true believers in Global warming that I’m wary that the buggers might’ve “improved” the data. Gimme the source data – preferably written in good old ink – and I’ll be happy to consider correction factors provided they chime with common sense. Such an approach is imperfect, using one location as a world proxy, but I can live with that, and the warmistas dismissive: “Huh, global warming happens worldwide. Your neck of the woods is an exception.” To unpick the fabric of deceit we must begin with a single stitch.

Like Doug Olbach, I want to see their workings. They claim it’s ‘the warmest ever’…. well I want to run a suspicious auditor’s eye over their data. It’s about time that Climatography got Quality Assured.

I am located in the middle of the UK and what is outside is seriously impressive, some 2 to 3 feet covering. I have not witnessed anything like this in the UK for an awful long time, back some 50 years maybe. Those memories are vague.

But what is happening in the UK this winter is weather, extreme, but weather. It is still possible to have a Met Office “mild winter”.

However I wonder if the Met Office will comment on the last decade of UK CET numbers which demonstrate a significant cooling trend.

To find a lower annual mean than this year’s number we have to go back 23 years to 1987. There is an equal in 1996, 14 years ago.

Over the last decade none of the season trends show warming. Spring is level, the other three are cooling.

The “growing season” April to October this year is 0.6C below last year and 1.6C below 2006.

I wonder why over the last decade “The World’s Oldest Thermometer” appears to be bucking the “global warming” trend.

The snow is a pain and will probably be gone soon. It is weather, but a decade long cooling trend?

Now who can say this isn’t a disruption? A global climate disruption caused so obviously by none other than that warming agent CO2? I guess Mann’s hockey stick graph was upside down all along…the blade actually points down!

But the ‘climate scientists’ from East Anglia are in Mexico, and when they get back and recuperate from their taxpayer tequila’s, they will convince the government that it was all an illusion, and it was still the hottest year for ever and ever amen!

What we have is atmospheric circulation gone into reverse. Cold air stream from “Siberia” blowing over North Sea picking up moisture and dumping it as snow. This links directly to the NAO and position of jet stream, but somehow seems also to correlate with solar activity. In Aberdeen we have over foot of snow – almost unheard of this time of year, and more forecast. Temperatures inland down to -20˚C – and it’s only early December. I guess this may be how the LIA began. Oh and by the way we are running out of nat gas and oil and coal and nuclear as well.

THURSDAY NOON
COLD HITTING ITS WORST POINT NEXT THREE DAYS… PATTERN EVOLVES WARMER (BUT STILL QUITE COLD) FOLLOWING WEEK. MID MONTH ON SHOULD BE BACK TO NORMAL IN NORTHWEST

Quite a headline.

And now a letter from a Norwegian reader:

….”I just want to let you know that middle of Norway just experienced the coldest November in at least 222 years! Similar records have been set all across the country with entire country as all being coldest on average in nearly 100 years or so….”

I wonder if the powers that be may want to think about that Nobel Peace Prize they gave for those fighting global warming?

The letter also goes on to opine about the obvious difference between the U.S. snow and ice center (heh, we are obviously driving this climate change train, no doubt about it to me, though we have a lot of partners) in their ice measurements and the other global centers.

But here is the question… Can London hit their coldest temperature ever? According to Wikianswers: According to the BBC it was -10c but in the suburbs it can get down to -12c.

We have a shot at getting that, and in fact the European model is forecasting Heathrow to hit -10C!

The shiver that is hitting is similar to the opening of January last year worldwide, where major cold shots engulfed the Far East, the eastern U.S., and Europe. That these are growing more pronounced is no accident, and the climate people arguing for reduction of greenhouse gasses are acting like spoiled children when they claim whatever happens means they are right. I wish I had their job. When I am wrong, in what I do in the private sector, the ramifications are people will cancel their contract if they feel I am wrong enough of the time to lose them money… By the way, it’s what I love about competition and capitalism… it forces those that wish to excel to compete… Imagine if your favorite football team was forced to “redistribute goals” based on some fictional rule that said that it wasn’t fair to score more than the other team?

I bet you wouldn’t be watching much football, eh?

Moral is that these wild cold shots mean at the least, the Earth is fighting back from the warming, which is intuitive given the actual total history of the globe. What is amazing is the arrogance, and sheer elitism of a crew that will claim such events as theirs, when they have cost the world an untold amount shoving an unproven agenda down people’s throats. While I have always believed he was good-intentioned (unlike many of my other companions in this debate), at the very least Al Gore’s stand on ethanol, sacrificing food for a fuel that not only can still be attained through fossil sources, but is polluting the northern Gulf o Mexico to a point where it’s becoming dead (fertilizer coming downstream), and then his complete capitulation on the hurricane issue (remember, global warming causes more hurricanes), should at least give pause. But instead, like any good ideologue, it’s simply ignore the facts and then claim the opposite effect as the sign you are right.

I get nuts about this stuff. For instance, in the month of November I had a U.S. forecast that was too cold by 2 degrees. This has major ramifications. Fortunately it appears December will vindicate me, and then if it gets warm in places I have targeted, my clients will probably on balance be happy, since they got the forecast for the winter in August. However, suppose, and there are some over here that are thinking this, the rest of December is warm? Well, two busts in a row, and people are going to be upset (not that they, and I, are not upset now). Suppose for instance, this cold wave simply holds all winter in northwest Europe and the pattern from the northwest to Scandinavia does not break with the cold coming farther southeast? A lot of you will be mad with me. BUT I AM NOT SETTING WORLD POLICY… NOR AM I FORCING YOU INTO SITUATIONS WHERE YOU MAY HAVE TO WONDER WHETHER YOU SPEND YOUR MONEY OVER FOOD, OR ENERGY, because someone that “knew better” set a standard that ties all our hands. Get the difference? Instead, what will happen is no one will read my blog anymore, no one will buy my services (assuming I am wrong enough), and so the crucible of competition will allow the cream to rise to the top.

The most ironic thing about this is that while I am on the side of the aisle that says cycles and cooling, I don’t want my opponents shut down. Quite the contrary. I want fair and even debate, and let the atmosphere decide who was right and wrong.

But how can that be, when no matter what the answer, one side is going to claim they are right?

Piers Corbyn’s Weather Action site correctly predicted last winter’s Arctic weather event in the UK – he accurately predicted that the country would have a ‘severe arctic event’ around January 6th-12th – which it did.

We have now had more than 8 days of serious snowfall and bitter winds on the East Coast – the snow is piled 4feet deep around the walls of my house – and Corbyn is forecasting that this ‘is not just a short cold snap;. He says it will last for a good three months – with extreme cold throughout December, January and February – possibly longer. If that turns out to be true, the UK is in deep, deep trouble. The road and rail network has broken down completely after less than a week; supermarkets cannot restock with milk and basic foods; farmers cannot feed livestock in the fields and neither can they harvest winter vegetable crops, which are now buried under feet of snow.
This is a very, very serious situation.

When someone trys to squeeze AWG in between my ears i just tell them no shit we’re warming up, We are coming out of a little ice age and we have only warmed up 0.7 degrees in 250+ years!!!!! It’s been alot warmer in the past and life florished in these times.

As for canada and 2010 being warmer then ever i find it very hard to believe. Right here in the greater montreal area spring and summer have been very bad (very little sunshine and not much heat waves like in the past) Also since 2007 we have had record winters in terms of snow. A very good explaination for the temperture being A LITTLE HIGHER is that the night tempertures have been much higher due to having so much cloud cover so the heat stays and also the fact that their is so much urban sprawl here well you know what happens to the weather station tempertures who themselves have not moved.

Despite the record 2010 warm winter in Canada , if you exclude the El Nino winters of 2003,2005, 2007 ,and 2010 the Canadian winter temperature departure [ anomaly] from the 1948-2010 norm has actually been dropping during the last 10 years since 2000 from 2.5C in 2000 t0 0.3C in 2009, the last very cold winter. Some regions like the Prairie Provinces have seen as much as 7.1 C drop from the 2006 winter .The warm El Nino’s greatly warm Canadian winters because of the close proximity to the warmer Pacicfic Ocean .The 2009/2010 El Nino is what accounted for the record 2010 warm winter and why there was less snow during the last Olympics , not due to global warming as many alarmists claimed . The snow prediction for the 2011 winter in my region[ Ontario] is for 130 -160 cm of snow over the winter. That is about 4-5 feet. So there is no unusal warming taking place in our winters despite the warm last winter. I expect our winters to continue to cool to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s levels during the next 20-30 years as both PDO and AMO go negative or cool despite the warmists hype to expect unprecedented warming. The winter of 2009 was typical of what we can expect during the next several decades.

“If you want, I’ll get some graphs demonstrating a rise in the average global temperature. That’s what global warming’s about.”

While you’re looking for those graphs, I have a few that will help inform you.

But first, let me point out that your “top 11 warmest years” are all within the satellite era, from about 1979 to current.

As Phil Jones says, statistically that shows little warming. And what little warming there is reults from the planet’s emergence from the LIA. There is no testable, empirical evidence showing that CO2 is the cause of that *very* mild 0.7° natural rise.

Now, for some graphs of the Holocene and before. Just to give you some much-needed perspective of where we are today:

click1 [Vostok. Current temps are at the left of the chart]click2 [Greenland]click3 [Vostok. Past 140K years]click4 [Vostok, past 12,000 years]click5 [Vostok, past 423,000 years]click6 [Natural temperature variations within the Holocene]click7 [Past 50K years]click8 [MWP back to the last interglacial]click9 [Vostok, declining temp trend over the Holocene]click10 [your leader explains]

What we are observing now is completely normal, natural, and well within past parameters.

Just thought I’d mention that in the Aberdeen where I live, Kurt Cobain country, Meteora came by last week and combed several inches of dandruff on us. Not nearly the foot people in that other one over in Scotland are claiming, though some of the stump farmers up the East Wishkah may have come close. Around here we get a white Christmas every half dozen years or so. White turkey day WUWT???? Only twice before in my memory, which goes back a lot farther than I want to admit.

Yes. Its the coldest November I ever remember in the UK . Compatible with global warming, pope says, yet a thing of the past previously, as mild global warming winters take hold. Both compatible with the same model.

We’re well aware of how 20th-21st century figures are manipulated. 1872 was the coldest part of the entire holocene – the convenient starting point of AWG theory, so both the MWP and the holocene optimum, were warmer and longer in period than today. In fact, 3/4 of the holocene have been warmer than what we have experienced.

You said “This is a very serious situation”. I agree . It seems that the weather is not even following the typical La Nina winter situation in Uk which historically produced warmer winters [around 4-5 C] . This pattern of generally cooler weather could go on for 4-5 months for some regions . One of the early warning signs is the continuing high positive[15 to 25] SOI in the Pacific . It has been this way for now about 5 months . It often predicts cooler weather for the globe 5-7 months later , like starting now and going for the next 5 months ? PDO is already negative or cool and AMO is starting to cool too but the latter is more difficult to predict . AO already reached a near record levels of -4 for a short time.[ like last year]

“If you want, I’ll get some graphs demonstrating a rise in the average global temperature. That’s what global warming’s about.”

Can you please stand in for the UK Met Office and show me a graph that explains why the UK CET “The World’s Oldest Thermometer” is showing a significant decade long cooling trend?

I have people in the UK telling me that the 30 year “standard” measure shows a warming trend. But I am not in a 30 year “standard” warming trend, I am in the last year, i.e. the sharp end, the here and now of a decade plus cooling trend!

Why over the last decade has “The World’s Oldest Thermometer” become disconnected? Could it possibly be that in our quest to produce a “Global Temperature” series that we might just be fallible? I suppose you see that as impossible?

Please don’t come back with “there are three different series” as they are incestuous in both raw data and methodology.

You deniers just don’t get it do you? Listen to the UK experts – AGW will result in much milder, shorter winters and snow will become a distant memory, and that is why we are experiencing record cold temperatures in November and December and record snow falls.

Duh!

REPLY: I assume you are being sarcastic, though one never knows these days with the angroids that the AGW issue creates. If being sarcastic always use the /sarc tag so people don’t have to guess. Enjoy your snow in central London! – Anthony

Our barometers are not that sensitive considering we depend on how many atmospheres of pressure for the depths of oceans.

We have 4 pieces of physical evidence of planetary change is occurring:
1) Salinity changes only on the oceans surface.
2) Growth up mountains can only be obtained with the generation of a great amount of back pressure exerting out against the atmosphere.
3) Wind reduction planet wide is addition of molecules in the atmosphere that cause friction and slow down the winds.
4) Light diminishing due to debris or soot in the atmosphere.

These factors indicate NOT AGW but planetary atmospheric pressure build-up.
H2 O(Water) has generated a quite effective and fascinating survival defence against mass evaporation and dispersement.
The evaporation process only started a billion years ago and has a very good understanding with salt from spinning off this planet when it was rotating faster.

Can someone tell me of another great scientist who suffered as Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and their boys suffer? I am not thinking of a Galileo who was roughed up by other people; rather, I am looking for a great scientist who, upon publishing his theory, was immediately assaulted by his physical environment and the very topic of his work. Madame Curie doesn’t quite fit the bill because she was aware that this X-ray thing was going to be tricky. Can someone offer a bit of help, please?

Sorry Anthony… post-post /sarc. The snow in central London is a little thin on the ground right now, but it is always a welcome event – it magically transforms the capital. I won’t even ask how you know my whereabouts! :)

If you were being sarcastic, my apologies. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

And yes, Anthony knows your whereabouts. He is a computer expert who knows where you are, when you used the commode, and whether you had kippered herring or spotted dick for lunch. He knows if you’ve been bad or good – so be good for goodness sake.☺

Hey Doug Obach, CBC is easy to explain ,Toronto is Canada to them, we who are west and north of their bubble are not in Canada.Remember the Enviroment Canada response to the Pembina Institutes FOI query into the state of Canadian weather records? There are not many stations reporting from the high arctic, so much is extrapolated apparently. Here in the lower arctic we have about 4″ of global warming and had a damp and cooler spring summer and fall.Its a balmy minus 25 C at the moment. On the bright side I just had the green energy solution come to me, human hamster wheels driving electric alternators. As community service sentences soon to be imposed on the purveyors of climate fear and ineffectual green alternate energy schemes(brainless assaults on our communities) the guilty will work off their debt to society by providing power when ever their alternative solutions fail. I expect they will develope massive leg muscles.

It’s been hitting -12C a lot of days here in Ontario near Lake Simcoe — you can tell it’s getting that cold. Most people throw on a jacket over their T-Shirts — though most people don’t button the jacket. Nobody here likes to get so hot they sweat.

Most people have started to wear long pants — almost nobody is wearing shorts at -12C — although some do. Sweatshirts over a T-Shirt aren’t unusual. If it stays cold or gets colder most will wear a coat — unbuttoned and flapping in the wind.

Personally? I think most of my neighbours are nuts. I would rather be enjoying cerveza y camerones on the beach in Cancun. Each to their own.

Great video of the early “British Rail” period and how the railways dealt with a bit of weather. And the legacy of Dr Beeching’s “modernisation plan” the rail transport network can’t even deal with wet leaves on the lines let alone snow to depths back then and today.

Everyone of my UK based friends and family are posting me images of heavy snow, covering everything. I’ve not seen images like this since the cold/snowy winters of the 1970’s where we had to deal with power outages (Power worker strikes) and very cold temperaures.

The amazing thing to me is….this is the second time in a single calendar year (yet spanning two winter seasons…..oh wait….we are still three weeks from the solstice) where the UK is in the deep freeze with deep snow.

Simply astounding.

And THIS from the UK Met website:

“As we head into December and take a look at the Met Office outlook, there appears to be no abrupt end to this cold and snowy weather for some time, but as soon as our forecasters see a change we will let you know.”

Basically…they are saying: “WE DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.”

It’s a decades long standing joke in the UK with predictions from The MET. When The MET says “It’ll be hot and dry in summer”, the Brits have a bit of chuckle to themselves, raise an eyebrow and think “Hummm, better get some wellies, a decent brolly and a good raincoat.” and more often than not, reality behaves somehow nothing like their predictions.

They obviously need a bigger power consuming computer as the current one is not producing enough “C02’s” (To coin a phrase from Geremy Clarckson) to force Gaia to prove their computer based prdictions right.

An official weather station near my home in Oslo has a record back to 1927. November this year had -4.9C shattering the old record, which was -4.0C. I did a quick statistical analysis. Compared to the 1961-1990 normal this year’s November was a once in a century event. However, if I compare against a running 30 year average assuming one of the more modest forcasts for the effect of global warming in this part of Norway, which matches well an extrapolation of the local warming since the late 80’s, this year’s November becomes a once in a millennium event (i.e. assuming continued warming for 2011-2025).

Piers Corbyn’s Weather Action site correctly predicted last winter’s Arctic weather event in the UK – he accurately predicted that the country would have a ‘severe arctic event’ around January 6th-12th – which it did.

We have now had more than 8 days of serious snowfall and bitter winds on the East Coast – the snow is piled 4feet deep around the walls of my house – and Corbyn is forecasting that this ‘is not just a short cold snap;. He says it will last for a good three months – with extreme cold throughout December, January and February – possibly longer. If that turns out to be true, the UK is in deep, deep trouble. The road and rail network has broken down completely after less than a week; supermarkets cannot restock with milk and basic foods; farmers cannot feed livestock in the fields and neither can they harvest winter vegetable crops, which are now buried under feet of snow.
This is a very, very serious situation.

And yet there is opportunity in it to fund the construction of conventional power plants, using the crisis as a justification, once the death toll gets high enough and the press howls for the heads of the powers that be. (Cf. Rahm Emanuel)

Perhaps this has been Cameron’s plan all along. A canny politician would plot his course this way.

Our political masters, regardless of party, have all embraced the policy of future brown outs and black outs. Almost no investment in new power stations over the past 15 years and now a love of unreliable, expensive, renewable energy projects, such as giant windmills.

Outside, the snow is lying deep on the ground and the air is still.

We still lead the world in goofiness, when it comes to ‘climate science’, as the events of the past few years have shown. This achievement will be a great comfort to future generations as they sit huddled in blankets waiting for the wind turbines to turn.

Some damn fool from the Met Office was on TV yesterday explaining that heavy falls of snow are evidence of “climate change”. She got the softest questioning imaginable from the BBC interviewer – along the lines of “Please tell us why heavy snow is due to global warming?”

The main problem here in the UK is not so much the snow and the cold, but that the government and public bodies all swallow the Met Office line about milder, shorter winters. Therefore they do not prepare for heavy snow and biting cold weather. If the government had prepared better we would not be having these problems. But they are fully signed up to the Warmist agenda.

Jay says: “According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

awww … I was going to say that!

Strange how the reputation of the CRU was assessed on whether it could be proven to have lied based on the data it had “lost” and not on it’s use of exaggerated predictions that were patently ridiculous and totally unscientific.

Patrick Davis says: It’s a decades long standing joke in the UK with predictions from The MET. When The MET says “It’ll be hot and dry in summer”, the Brits have a bit of chuckle to themselves, raise an eyebrow and think “Hummm, better get some wellies, a decent brolly and a good raincoat.” and more often than not, reality behaves somehow nothing like their predictions.

Except for our stupid MPs who spend their life in the urban heated dump that’s called London and then speed off to tropical climes for a third of the year and experience so little if anything of the real (cold) British weather suffered by their electors.

No wonder these – here-today-gone-tomorrow MPs seem to think the whole world has become super heated ….

…. until that electorate they gave the cold shoulder too dump them in the cold at the next election.

In October, or there abouts, the UKMO predicted a mild winter. This may be true given that we are still in autumn! We have had the coldest temperatures on record in a couple of places and that was in November. Last night, 2nd Dec, was forecast to be colder due to clear skies. I live in Lincolnshire, the hilly Wolds, and we have 1 ft+ of snow and a female Labrador who has still to make up her mind whether she likes it or not. Certainly not to squat in!
So I think that the ‘mild’ forecast may be wrong and those pesky Russians, who have nabbed the 2014 World Cup, may be correct with their ‘colder winters’ forecast.

“Where there are no theremometers, it is getting warmer, much warmer. Trust us on that.”

Huge masses of very frigid air are descending from the Artic Polar region, and they are displacing warm air from southern climes to move to the Artic polar region. Damn, the world is warming . . . in the Artic Polar Regions, sho ’nuff.

The current crisis is definitely man made – at least in my local council.

Yes, this is unusually early snow and lots of it, but it would have been manageable, even with the persistent snow fall. My kids have been off school for the whole week, leaving a lot of working parents in great difficulties. The most annoying thing is that the collapse of the infrastructure is almost entirely down to a string of administrative decisions – a few years ago the council decided to outsource road clearance to a private company – and then chose not to invest enough money in their contract with them.

There were four brand new snow ploughs/gritters just sitting in the company’s yard this week, most likely due to a lack of qualified drivers thanks to the council’s decision to discontinue funding any extra qualifications of their staff and payment for services delivered. Snow plough certificates are held by quite a number of council employees but now they’re expected to pay for renewal fees themselves plus they’re no longer rewarded financially for the extra service they provide. Thus a much lower number offer to be on 24hr call to drive the snow ploughs/gritters.

And even if the council had managed to clear the roads around our schools, the janitorial workforce was cut by 50% recently so now they don’t have the staff to check the heating/plumbing hasn’t suffered any damage and to get it all going and it means more staff living further away and not able to get into the schools thanks to the roads not being cleared.

We certainly had enough teachers as their contract demands they report for duty at their nearest school in such circumstances as this, but the ones I know were told not to bother as the schools were closed due to the above reasons anyway.

Wonder how that works out financially for the council – was the money saved through these decisions worth the collapse of the infrastructure? And what if we had a snowy cold spell lasting for a month?

Ten years ago the Met Office told us that because of global warming, children would grow up in the UK never seeing snow. We were also told that severe winters such as we had in the 1940s and 1960s, which occurred with a frequency of once every 20 years, would still occur, but because of global warming would be a once every thousand years event. Funny that only ten years into a new millenium we have had two once-in-a-1000-years events within 12 months.

Amusing to see how even my fellow norwegians from the south of our long (and cold) country seem to be unaware of the temperatures along the northern coast of Norway. It’s well above the arctic circle, but the temperatures there are nevertheless above freezing. Care to comment Steinar?

Acinonyx says:
December 2, 2010 at 5:26 pm
“Anthony: AGW does not refer to a constant rise in global temperature everywhere. Rather, it refers to an overall increase in mean global temperature.”

So why did you nuts go on record and say snow would be a thing of the past and children would never experience it? You guys really need to sit down together and get your collective stories straight because you really sound foolish.

The British Met Office fills me with wonder; my twice-daily temp readings from my back-yard instruments in suburban London ( I have two thermometers in case one shows a serious error, but the two have always agreed) tell me that the Met forecasts have a consistent error toward ‘warm’ , an error which increases as the temperatures drop; the readings of yesterday, Dec 2, are typical – forecast max = -1c, actual = -2c, while the forecast Min = -4c, actual Min = -7c, which tells me that it’s a helluva lot colder than the Met Office said it would be. My readings matched the forecast on only two days in the previous two months. As the seasons tick around to Summer again, the difference between my instruments and the Met Office forecast will be minimal, on past experience.
The real problem is that their forecast has no memory – they announce or print the forecasts and each following day, yesterday’s forecast goes down the memory hole, then it’s replaced by the new forecast, so their performance is never mentioned by them or examined as a reality check.
I also have a rain guage, but it blocked a day ago, the powdered snow sat frozen in the mouth of the tapered graduated tube, so I measured the snow with a ruler.
My old home on the Hibiscus Coast in the Rodney District, NZ, looks very inviting right now with today’s on-line forecast min of 15c and a high of 23c, while I look out my work-room window at yesterday’s snow sitting frozen in place on all the tiny garden shed roofs and lawns in the neighbouring back yards.
Strangely, my max/min thermometer in NZ used to agree closely with the NIWA forecast but I did have to empty my rain guage twice each day in the wetter parts of the year, as the occasional rainstorm would fill it in a couple of hours – NIWA refers to these as ‘rain bombs’ and they are damned inconvenient to be caught outdoors in!

The UK will return to a mini Ice age because the Atlantic conveyor has been shut down due to the entry of oil into the north Atlantic, via the gulf oil being dispersed into the deep water thermoclines. It will get much worse, depending on how long the oil regulates the characteristics of the Atlantic conveyor.

When year after year the weather does not match the climate models, shouldn’t real scientists start to question those models? If the temperatures actually experienced by us don’t match the claims by experts don’t we have a right to challenge those claims? After all we are paying their wages.

Very cold here, lots of snow, just like my childhood back in the sixties. Maybe a repeating pattern, signs of a cycle coming around off a maximum and running down to cooler times?

“As we head into December and take a look at the Met Office outlook, there appears to be no abrupt end to this cold and snowy weather for some time, but as soon as our forecasters see a change we will let you know.”

From the “Children won’t know what snow is department”: Dr. David Viner, whose place in history is assured by that splendid prediction, has a rival for the title of Britain’s Most Gormless Global Warming Expert. Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Energy programme, reassures us that “gravity will remain roughly the same”. Phew! With all the old certainties disappearing, it’s good that our Top Brains can find some continuity in amongst all the chaos.

The Anderson Declaration’s fuller version is: “I mean there are some things in science, you know, gravity will remain roughly the same, there will be lots of things in science that remain the same. And therefore we can say quite a lot about the physical makeup of the world. And if you know there’s 9 million billion people in there about how they may respond.” Reference: http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/audio/getting-four-degrees

Smokey says:
“And yes, Anthony knows your whereabouts. He is a computer expert who knows where you are, when you used the commode, and whether you had kippered herring or spotted dick for lunch. He knows if you’ve been bad or good – so be good for goodness sake.”

But how can that be??? I haven’t had a smart meter installed yet!!! :-o

So why did you [snip] go on record and say snow would be a thing of the past and children would never experience it?
—————-
because it was one guy who made that assessment and that assesssment was based on some time in the future. In other words not this year but a generation hence. The temperature so far has only shifted 0.7C.
—————-
You guys really need to sit down together and get your collective stories straight because you really sound foolish.
—————-
I thought you guys were having a moral outrage fit because you believe the scientists did exactly that. I guess the truth slips out by accident sometimes.

In case you guys did not notice, the climate modellers PREDICTED several years ago that there would be more extreme weather events. It’s just plain cheating to claim that the scientists are modifying their story after the event.

In case you guys did not notice, the climate modellers PREDICTED several years ago that there would be more extreme weather events. It’s just plain cheating to claim that the scientists are modifying their story after the event.

Did they happen to define what they meant by “more extreme weather events” by any chance or are they simply going to retrospectively declare which things are “more extreme weather events”? Did they happen to suggest a mechanism by which these “more extreme weather events” are caused by human generated increases in CO2 in the atmosphere?

While I enjoy and appreciate all the biting sarcasm, I must admit I’m growing a bit concerned about the growing cool trend. Getting warmer? That’s fine by me. People, animals and plants all seem to love a warm environment. Getting cooler? It may sound okay in the dead of summer, but I feel for people living in Northern climes. I recently read how Russia is readying itself for a bitter winter, regardless of the heatwave they had earlier in the year. My thoughts will be for my fellow Man this winter. I hope the cooling trend is merely a passing trend and not something that’s coming down hard to stay. There’s been cold times in Earth’s history… harsh cold… some folks may need to make sure their axes are sharp and the wood’s laid up.

The continuing snow and icy weather conditions are jeopardising the future of hundreds of small businesses across the UK, business groups have warned.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) told the BBC as many as 800-900 small businesses were under threat as a result of the cold snap.

Businesses where cashflow is vital, such as bars and restaurants, are really suffering, it said.

The Federation of Small Businesses said members were “particularly hard-hit”.

But other sectors, particularly retail and leisure, could lose out on business entirely, with potentially severe consequences for some small businesses.

“Quite a lot of small businesses are quite close to the brink now,” said Mr McWilliams.

“I think at least a few hundred, maybe as many as 800 or 900, could go bankrupt that otherwise wouldn’t have because this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

He said businesses that rely on cash were particularly vulnerable.

The Federation of Small Business said it was “disappointed that we still haven’t learnt the lessons from previous bad weather and that the country has yet again ground to a halt”.”

==========================

And the reason no one has learned any lessons from this is because biased scientific organizations like the UK Met plus their darling the media and those making policy….have been barking up the wrong tree for a generation now.

So no policies are set in place to prepare for….what if the world turns cold.

LazyTeenager says:
December 3, 2010 at 5:04 am
“In case you guys did not notice, the climate modellers PREDICTED several years ago that there would be more extreme weather events. It’s just plain cheating to claim that the scientists are modifying their story after the event.”

They also predicted that snow in Britain would be a thing of the past, just to cover all bases. Are you working in the climatologist scam circles or why do you defend these people?

Most of the temperature, snow, rain “records” come from city centers and/or airports. Quit complaining, you rural folks; its time to move to the center of the airports. We can buy and move those inexpensive foreclosed homes.

In addition, airports have the best snow removal equipment. After removal of snow the runways heat up faster (less reflection) so your new home will be warmer. This will be needed during a “quiet Sun”.

By the way, where are those Solar Physicists? Why haven’t they predicted the “quiet Sun” . Oh, I forgot, Solar Science is settled.

You all have heard/read that the Sun is 75% H and 25% He. But in the core, the Sun is 75% He and 25% H and other things. Maybe the core runs low on H every 400 years and the migration of H into the core takes a while; maybe 50 years (see Maunder Minimum).

Bottom line -> As it gets colder [quiet Sun], move to where it is warmer. It is warmer where the AGW people measure temperature!!!

“In case you guys did not notice, the climate modellers PREDICTED several years ago that there would be more extreme weather events. It’s just plain cheating to claim that the scientists are modifying their story after the event.”

So now it’s “more extreme weather”? The hockey stick was all about getting warmer. The scare was more heat, more drought, less snow, less cold, less polar bears. The exact opposite is happening on all fronts. And now we retrofit and say it was all about the extreme weather: more snow or less snow, more heat or less heat, more rain or less rain, more storms or less storms. Guys, you can’t have it all ways. The warmists have predicted practically everything based on alleged AGW. So if anthing in that list happens, you are right? As a career scientist I have one word for that: “BlulSiht” That’s not the way science works. I’d be laughed out of my office and into unemployment if I conducted my science like that.

December 3, 2010 at 10:25 am
I noted in a previous post on the UK winter weather blog that the current cold spell in Europe and Asia could last for 4-5 months at least based on the past indications of SOI. Enviornment Canada prediction for the next 2-4 and even 4-6 for most for CANADA is for below normal weather. Europe will likely be the same in my opinion.

“The UK will return to a mini Ice age because the Atlantic conveyor has been shut down due to the entry of oil into the north Atlantic, via the gulf oil being dispersed into the deep water thermoclines. It will get much worse, depending on how long the oil regulates the characteristics of the Atlantic conveyor”.

My poor Native Californian son, living in Oslo. He tells me that in Norway they say that there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. Mebee so, but this is pushing it for my central valley boy. :)

I’ve got to agree with Lazy Teenager. There is cherrypicking on this thread.

Among the overwhelming consensus of alarmist statements predicting all sorts of calamities, we choose the ONE that suggests snow will be a distant memory. And given enough time, that claim could be proved correct (like the monkey who randomly types-out the works of Shakespeare, given enough time.)

We’re being unfair by picking on one statement in the press when there is a multitude of others who haven’t a clue about what they’re talking about in equal measure.

Or … radical thought … perhaps it’s time for people to stop embarrassing themselves with ridiculous alarmist predictions.

Can someone tell me of another great scientist who suffered as Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and their boys suffer?

Prosper-René Blondlot comes to mind, who “discovered” N rays in 1903. It was debunked next year by Robert Williams Wood, still, there are some 300 published papers by 120 scientists during the period 1903-1906, all confirming the phenomenon and describing various aspects of it in detail. Blondot himself has probably not abandoned the notion till his death 27 years later.

“In case you guys did not notice, the climate modellers PREDICTED several years ago that there would be more extreme weather events. It’s just plain cheating to claim that the scientists are modifying their story after the event.”

A warmer planet actually causes less extreme events due to the more northern position of the jet stream. When the jet stream tends to stay further South extreme events increase and this not the sign of warming planet. It is plain cheating saying whatever happens is evidence to support a belief when can’t even distinguish it from a natural weather event. The climate modellers didn’t predict the jet stream positioning further South, so it is wrong because these severe events were caused by this. When this becomes clearer there is bound to be a alarmist scientist that says AGW caused this jet stream change too. (when it clearly didn’t)

Sorry, you have last sentence wrong, this is exactly what there doing and have been for many years. (most alarmists) Whatever happens is full of spin and claimed that this was predicted. If everything that happens is down to warming planet then science is dead and can’t be falsified. You are not going to get a severe cold period instead of mild period due to any AGW, it can only modify it and all recent severe weather is explained well by the postion of the jet stream and weather patterns not AGW.

Amusing to see how even my fellow norwegians from the south of our long (and cold) country seem to be unaware of the temperatures along the northern coast of Norway. It’s well above the arctic circle, but the temperatures there are nevertheless above freezing. Care to comment Steinar?
******

Me! Me!
Maybe the adjacent ocean is above freezing (not frozen), and the air is blowing off the ocean?

Not to confuse local (yes UK is local) vs global climate. Local weather is often affected by changes in ocean currents which the UK depends on for their temperate climate. In the last mini-ice age, it is suspected that the NA current shut down due to previously warmer climes that caused a change in salinity of the northern oceans. Many fear that this will happen again. To get an ideal on how this may affect UK ‘weather’ in the end, draw a latitude line through London and around the globe. You ain’t seen nothing yet!

I dont know how much more contrarian climate evidence must be demonstrated before Al Gore will just shut up. Its time to go after these people, on all fronts with legal methods, for fraud and deceit. They have literally taken billions of dollars under false pretenses. One of my most satisfying moments would be to see Al Gore in a orange jumpsuit, wearing leg irons and stripped of his Nobel Prize.

Err, but don’t I remember that the point about AGW is that it would cause melting of glaciers etc… leading to dilution of the gulf stream which will slow down and transfer less heat to UK/Europe and give colder winters.

You know, if my children are lucky and manage to have their own kids, and so on, my great great great great great grandchildren’s generation will look back on this period in time and piss themselves laughing at our gross stupidity and arrogance in thinking we could control the Earth’s thermostat and ‘agree’ that we should ‘Limit’ any temperature rise to ‘only’ 2 deg c or whatever our political masters have decided is good for us……….
I worry though that our planet, and our Sun, may have ‘decided’ on a different path for us and those generations may well not even get that
chance of reflection.